Personal Branding Blog
The Personal Branding Blog offers branding and career advice from Dan Schawbel and his team of experts.
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Steve Pavlina’s 5-Point Guide to Achieving Your Personal Branding Goals
This week we’ll work on more effectively achieving your goals as you build your personal brand. Helping us today is personal development guru (and a top personal role model) Steve Pavlina, who is widely recognized as one of the most successful personal development bloggers on the web, attracting over two million monthly readers to his blog. With a full-time job and outside hobbies, it can be difficult to regularly make time to build your brand. Use the tactics below to... |
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How to Align Your Business Cards with Your Brand
Business cards may seem extremely outdated in today’s technology-driven world. However, they are actually an important part of your brand. Think of business cards as a portable version of you and your brand – one that you hand out to other people to remember you by. Design matters An eye-catching design can say a lot about you and your brand. Check out these before and after designs. So, take the design process seriously, and just like every other part of your brand, think... |
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Personal Brands: Do Ask. Don’t Tell.
“When is it appropriate for me to criticize my co-worker?” I got the question from a young manager in my course: Pitching the Perfect Presentation, on campus at UCLA last week. I felt flooded by the power to disabuse an entire group of people about an entirely inappropriate – yet pervasive – kind of communication: delivering unasked for criticism. I thought I’d expand on my academic platform and let you in on the etiquette. How do you ask? Have you ever asked for permission... |
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Personal Branding Interview: Brad Tuttle
Today, I spoke to Brad Tuttle, who is a contributing editor at Budget Travel, and author of How Newark Became Newark. As a freelance writer, he has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, Newsday, and American History, among other publications. In this interview, Brad talks about how he got started in the media world, freelancing versus working for a company, and more. How did you get started in the media world? I started off as a stringer for my local newspaper. I was a... |
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Working on Your Brand Delivers Cutting Edge Skills
A successful personal brand differentiates you as a dynamic, growing professional, so it evolves along with market demands (employer requirements) and your growing skills. When your skills keep current with changing market demands, your brand stays relevant and you maximize your earnings potential. From a practical POV, this demands an objective way to track relentlessly changing employer needs. A practical point of view (POV) The most reliable approach is with a Gap analysis... |
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LeBron James: The Brand That Crossed The Line
LeBron James’s choice to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat is a major personal branding catastrophe. Not just because he’s leaving the place where he grew up, but because he did it on national TV to boost his own ego, at the expense of a team he’s been on for years. ESPN took complete advantage of this situation to get more viewers, and make more advertising revenue, while disrespecting Cleveland and basketball fans everywhere. The aftermath, in... |
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A Cup of Coffee to Personal Article Marketing
Today is the day to begin showcasing your expertise online so searchers will find your name attached to some well-written, helpful, and informative content. When done right, personal article marketing is a sure fire way to solidify your personal brand, increase your credibility, and prove yourself a thought leader in your industry. Focus on the where Let’s dive right in, because there’s no time to waste today – we only have the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee,... |
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Personal Branding Interview: Judy Shapiro
Today, I spoke to Judy Shapiro, who is Chief Brand Strategist of Cloud Linux, CEO of engageSimply a social media/ direct marketing communications company and contributor to AdAge.com. In this interview, Judy talks about how she got started in the advertising world, how the industry has changed since she started, calculating the ROI of social media, and more. How did you get started in the advertising world? My Dad was a printer and I often worked at his printing shop as a... |
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Are We There Yet?
This is the mantra of younger kids and people networking – online and offline. Impatient for results, they wonder why no one’s responding, why won’t they retweet me, where’s my traffic and if I put a status update out there and no one comments on it am I being heard? Questions like: How long does it take to get to 1,500 Twitter followers? What’s the time frame to see ROI on social media? I’ve got to see sales tied directly to social media, when will I see that? ... |
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Personal Branding Lessons From Coca-Cola
No matter what you think of Coca-Cola, you have to admit they excel at branding. It’s mind-blowing that a fizzy drink has 5.9 million fans on Facebook – and that’s just their main fan page too – there are many other related pages for specific countries or drink types. This popularity got me thinking about why this brand is still so successful today and has been for over a century. I wanted to work out what they’re doing right and most of all discover... |
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Do People Like Your Personal Brand?
How much people like you will have a direct impact on your career and almost everything you do, but being liked is a relative thing. True story At a former company of mine, there was an engineer who was overwhelmed with work. We’ll call him Tom. This 8-year veteran of the IT department – his first job, still a young guy – clearly had too much on his plate and it resulted in delayed projects and even undelivered projects. Finally, Tom’s boss convinced... |
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Personal Branding Interview: Jay Greene
Today, I spoke to Jay Greene, who served as BusinessWeek’s Seattle bureau chief till 2009, and is now the author of Design Is How It Works. In this interview, Jay talks about design thinking, how important design is for brands, examples of design companies that have succeeded, and more. Jay, what is “design thinking”? It’s really the practice of applying the skills designers use to create products to solve all sorts of business challenges, even ones that don’t... |
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2020: Personal Brands and Social Media
I think it’s safe by now to say that social media is here to stay. It’s not a fad anymore. In fact, to many in the industry, social media is the gateway to a future of seamless social communications that will (get ready for it) re-humanize the Internet. If you take a look back at the evolution of social media, you can see that it’s not about specific websites or applications that social media live within but rather innovations that move the socialization of the internet... |
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How to Embrace Your DNA
In High School I was caught in the middle. I was the kid in all of the AP courses who got straight A’s, but I also played basketball for the high school team. I had friends in the “smart” group and in the “baller” group, but I never really hung out with them outside of school; instead, I had my group of close friends (about 5-7 guys), and pretty much never hung around with a girl. Changing my brand When UCLA came along, I had it in my mind to... |
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Personal Branding Interview: Jane Buckingham
Today, I spoke to Jane Buckingham, who is the President of Trendera, a generational expert, and author of her latest book called The Modern Girl’s Guide to Sticky Situations. She is also the wife of Marcus Buckingham, who appeared on the cover of Personal Branding Magazine in the seventh issue. In this interview, Jane talks about how she created her own brand, what sticky situations to avoid in the workplace, and more. How did you come up with the The Modern Girl’s Guide... |
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7 Ways to Start Building Your Personal Brand for Free
Today, it’s easier than ever for individuals to build and promote the personal brands for free, long before writing and publishing a book. The Internet offers you numerous free ways to demonstrate your subject area expertise, set yourself apart from your competition, and build your online visibility. There are several ways you can take small steps today that represents investments you can build on later, developing a major competitive advantage relative over your peers. Start... |
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Personal Branding Interview: M.P. Mueller
Today, I spoke to M.P. Mueller, who is the President at Door Number 3, as well as the New York Times “Branded” blogger. In this interview, M.P. talks about the survival rate for companies that don’t have brands, lessons she’s learned from running a small business, and more. What’s the life expectancy for a company that doesn’t have a brand? Between a dragonfly’s life (for months) and a worker ant’s life (1 to 3 years). Okay, there are some who last... |
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HOW TO: Develop and Maintain Your Personal Brand on Twitter
Twitter rose to fame in 2007 as a hip, 140-character “microblogging” network. The free service has a multitude of uses, including social/professional networking, live blogging, news sourcing, and pure communication. Some professionals have struggled using Twitter, attempting to strike a balance between business and personal, while developing or maintaining their personal brand. Developing your account Your Handle: Your Twitter handle (username) is how you are found and... |
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Personal Brands: Hate and Disorder
How are you doing amidst the piles you’ve created? You know, the piles of old bills, dirty clothes, and detritus of your hobbies (like your carnival stuffed animal collection or unusable swag from less than stellar events)? Maybe it’s not your clutter. Maybe it’s your roommate’s mess, or your office mate’s. Maybe you inherited it from a well-meaning relative who filled up your place with her old furniture or your work ancestor: the person who sat at your desk or cubicle... |
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Branding Has To Be Part Of A Career Success Plan
In a less secure professional world than anyone has ever known, you need a tougher, more pragmatic approach to managing your professional life. It’s time to stop thinking of yourself simply as a job title and an employee, because this point-of-view has you psychologically shackled to entities that can, and will, dispose of your services at short notice. Me, Inc. Instead, start to think of yourself as MeInc, a corporation that operates in the best interests of its shareholders... |